* * *
Avonelle was not waiting when Kaylin returned to the Warden and his men. Severn was. He glanced at her and she shook her head once. She didn’t feel a great desire to discuss the Consort’s health in front of total strangers.
The Warden’s home was not, by any stretch of the imagination, humble—at least not as mortals understood it. It was as tall and imposing as the building that housed the Lord of the West March; it was not, however, built the same way.
The home of Lord Lirienne boasted a large amount of stone; it contained the central courtyard with its fountains, and also played home to a theoretically natural source of hot water. The home of the Warden reminded Kaylin of the Hallionne Sylvanne, at least from the outside.
The door was a large tree.
Many of the homes in Elantra were made of wood—but that wood had pretty much stopped growing, on account of being cut down. The doors that led to those homes also boasted things like hinges. And handles. Here, she stared with some dismay at the bark of a very wide tree, glancing nervously at the small dragon.
“I don’t have to bleed on this door, do I?”
Severn winced, and she realized she’d fallen straight into her mother tongue in the presence of the Warden of the West March. He didn’t wince.
“No, blood isn’t necessary,” he replied, in Elantran. “You visited the Hallionne Sylvanne on your journey here.”
“I did.”
“My hall is not sentient. What peace exists within it, I preserve. The door is warded.”
Why had she thought this was a good idea? “I have a little problem with door wards.”
“How so?”
“Sometimes they object to my presence. It’s not all door wards,” she added, as he looked down his nose. “But—the ones in the Imperial Palace, and at least one in Lord Lirienne’s home—” She grimaced. “It’s harder to explain than to demonstrate.”
“It will not harm you?”
“No. Not directly.”
“Does it harm the ward?”
She should be so lucky. “It hasn’t harmed any of the wards so far.” She lifted her left hand, and placed the palm firmly against the midsection of the trunk. It was a guess; there didn’t seem to be much in the way of obvious markings.
But the small dragon considered it all boring; he didn’t hiss, leap up, or bite her hand.
The door opened, in a manner of speaking; the tree dilated, the bark folding back in wrinkles, as if it were cloth. Usually Kaylin would be grateful for the lack of fuss; today, it was slightly humiliating.
“It appears that my wards do not consider you a danger to my home,” Lord Barian said. If he was amused, he kept it to himself. He entered and turned to offer her an arm; he nodded at Severn, and the four men Kaylin assumed were his guard stepped back to allow Severn entry.
The interior of the Warden’s home matched the exterior in many ways; the halls were as tall as the High Halls, but they weren’t made of stone—or at least the supporting beams weren’t; they were trees. They grew, evenly spaced; their branches formed the bower of a ceiling. Through the gaps in wood, Kaylin thought she could see stars, but she had a feeling that rain, when it fell, didn’t penetrate the branches the way light did.
He caught the direction of her gaze, because she had to tilt her head and expose her throat to see it. “Does it worry you?”
She shook her head. “This is what I imagined the dwellings in the West March would look like.”
“Why? The High Halls are marvels of architecture, and they are all of stone.”
“The High Halls are in the heart of a city. There are roads and neatly tended lawns and spaces in the inner city where very little that isn’t weeds grow. The West March is in the heart of a forest. I could walk for days—maybe weeks—and not meet or hear another living person.” She hesitated, and then added, “I thought forests would feel like this: grand and ancient and hushed.”
“They did not meet your expectations?”
“There were a lot of bugs and a lot of the transformed. I didn’t really get a sense of peace.”
He smiled. “There is peace here, at the moment. Come. If you wish sight of stars, we might speak in the bowers above.”
* * *
This was not a place for the old or the exhausted. The bowers above involved a walk around the central pillar in the hall—a tree which was fitted with a narrow, spiraling staircase. It was as tall as the Hawklord’s tower, but the stairs were all filigree from the looks of them; Kaylin could see the ground beneath her feet. The Barrani didn’t feel a great need for something as practical as rails, either.
But the stairs did exit onto a platform that seemed to be part of the tree. A bench girded the trunk; it, like the branches, was not shaved of bark. There was something about it that felt natural, rather than unfinished.
The branches here rose; they offered an unimpeded view of the West March—at this height, it appeared to be mostly trees—and the night sky.
“This dwelling is considered rustic,” he said softly. “But it is the seat of the Warden; it has been my home for all but a few decades.”
“Were the rest spent in the High Halls?”
“Yes. In the shadow of a Dragon, surrounded by a sea of mortals and the specter of failure.”
She glanced from the sky to the Warden; no trace of humor touched his expression.
“I hated your city. I hated the noise, the smell, the lack of peace; it is never silent unless one is encased in the stone of the High Halls.”
“You found them suffocating,” Kaylin guessed.
He nodded. “I do not hear the voice of the green when I am in your city.”
“Can you hear it now?”
He did smile then. Kaylin had been cautioned not to trust the Barrani; at times, it was hard.
“Ah. Can you see them?”
She squinted obligingly into the night sky. She could see treetops, the occasional glimpse of a building’s roof, and a lot of stars. She was about to remind the Warden of the marked inferiority of mortal vision when she caught a glimpse of wings.
She glanced at his face; the entirety of the deck was bathed in a gentle luminescence. His eyes, as he watched the eagles, were green. They were the color of the dress she wore. His eyes rounded as the eagles approached; he stood and walked to the edge of the platform. It had rails—but they were decorative, and they were short.
Severn was a shadow on this deck. He had not spoken, and hadn’t moved, since they’d arrived. When she cast a worried glance in his direction, she was surprised; she’d expected him to be wary and watchful. He was the latter, but his eyes were on the approaching eagles, his lips turned up in a half smile that seemed almost unconscious.
When they were close, the Warden held out one arm. “Lord Kaylin, if you would do the same, they will both land.”
She held out one arm looking so dubious that Severn chuckled. “I don’t have arm guards. I have a dress I’m sure it’s an act of treason to damage, and given the Barrani, it won’t matter if the eagles cause that damage. I’m wearing it. It’ll be my fault.”
The first of the eagles landed on the raised arm of the Warden.
The second landed on Kaylin’s left forearm. As